“Chase dog, eat your food,” I say standing over the bowl of dry kibble, looming over the dog who often reminds me she doesn’t speak English. Remembering this, I phrase it a different way, expecting this time it will have greater effect or impact: “Eat your food, Chase dog.”
For some reason, it doesn’t work. She merely sits on the floor in the morning staring at me.
“Eat! There are starving children in China.”
Why don’t these lines work on her?
Why isn’t she eating?
The dog’s face seems to tell me she would rather have a deranged poodle yank all her hair out than eat these pathetic looking rabbit pellets. “No thank you, I’ll go without.”
It’s been cause for concern in my house.
The dog is healthy and spry. She looks like a puppy, except for the weathered gray she’s getting on her face. She’s full of energy, has a youthful disposition and can jump like the ground’s on fire. Her weight is good and hasn’t changed. Our vet even thinks she’s in remarkably good health for a girl her age –about 10 — and she exercises regularly.
Physically she’s fine. Medically, just as good.
“So what is it?” we’ve wondered, sitting at the dinner table.
It’s a mystery.
Her stomach makes such strange noises in the morning. It wakes us up with all of its gurgling and groggling. It sounds like an avalanche or a wounded animal begging for mercy. It sounds like a septic tank where things are about to turn explosive. At times I’ve thought her K-9 belly was talking to me: “Hey jerky, get up and feed us. We’re starving in here.”
“Why is she not eating regularly?” we ask, scratching our heads as our little toddler tosses her handfuls of Cheerios, pasta, bread, pancakes and all manner of other people-foods from her high chair. “What could be making the dog’s appetite change like this?”
In the morning when her stomach starts gurgling, her first reaction is to beg to go outside where she grazes on the yard like a starving cow. Then she begs to come back in so she can hack it all up on the living room rug. Everyone always says if a dog’s stomach is upset, they eat grass. But no one ever explains why dogs aren’t smart enough to take Pepto instead, or how eating grass soothes them. And they sure don’t know why throwing up on the living room rug is such a key ingredient in this miracle elixir for dog tummies.
“What is the cause of all of this?” I say frustrated, a hand on my head as our child passes a steak down to the dog, followed by a potato, a bottle of Tabasco sauce, a bag of chips, a box of powdered sugar and a beer. “Why is a perfectly healthy dog having these problems?”
There’s another stomach ailment I hate to even mention for the sake of all those squeamish readers. Suffice it to say, I’m not referring to a solid or liquid problem, which leaves only one elemental state it could be. It’s the elemental state that could blowout windows and melt paint off the walls. It’ll make you hallucinate and think about selling your house. It will chase the squirrels out of trees and have the neighbors calling the city to come check the sewer lines for a backup. Please, please, don’t make me go on.
It’s too painful, and really it’s all wearing on me. What’s a matter with my healthy dog? What could it be?
If you have any ideas, please let me know. In the meantime, excuse me for a second as my child is fixing to give her a rack of baby back ribs with extra sauce and a scoop of ice cream on top. That poor dog!